how religion hurts science literacy.

F

Free Thinker

new study shows religion damages scientific literacy. in this thread we saw how religionists rationalize psudoscience to make it fit what they believe:
http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?threadid=227650

can a nation survive as a superpower if religion constantly trys to drag it back to a time before enlightenment?


Religion and Scientific Literacy in the United States†
Darren E. SherkatArticle first published online: 18 OCT 2011



this research shows that religious factors have persistent negative effects on scientific literacy even after controls for educational attainment, ethnicity, immigrant status, and income. Further, the magnitude of the impact of religious factors on scientific literacy is substantial. Religion plays more of a role in structuring scientific literacy than does gender, ethnicity, or income.

In an era when citizens are called on to evaluate scientific evidence for issues like evolution, global warming, health-care policy, environmental pollution, and the like, the low levels of scientific literacy in the United States are a substantial barrier to reasoned discourse and informed political action. Although conservative Christian activists claim that their conflict with science is primarily related to theories of evolution or the propriety of stem cell research, this research shows that the effect of sectarian religious identifications and fundamentalist religious beliefs extends well beyond these two issues. Given the low levels of scientific literacy prevalent among fundamentalist and sectarian Christians, they may have difficulty understanding public issues related to scientific inquiry or pedagogy, and they may have a limited capacity to understand technical information regarding their own health and safety.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1540-6237.2011.00811.x/full
 
Science literacy is screwed regardless of religion.

People believe the man-made global warming nonsense without question.
People allow their opinions to be influenced by polls deemed to be scientific.
People are taught by leftist union teachers hell-bent on keeping people stupid, ie. Occupy Wall Street.
People watch and read media who are a bunch of leftists, not journalists.
etc etc
stupide.gif
 
Articles like this one and the others obsessively posted by this person are interesting to me. Not because of their content, which is predictable and easily refuted, but because of the similarity with attacks traditionally made on persecuted minorities throughout history. Whether Jews in Nazi Germany, the proletariet in revolutionary Russia, ethnic minorities in Rwanda, etc "they" are always attacked as inferior in ways that are holding the rest of society back, or "they" are personally responsible for some challenge or humiliating setback to the nation, or "they" have traits that make them somewhat subhuman and despictable.

The aim is to first delegitimize the persecuted group, then gradually make it acceptable for them to receive disparate treatment, then lastly to get rid of the hated group altogether, whether by genocide, expulsion or concentration camps.

I understand that many on the left are hostile to traditional religion for a variety of issues, typically resentment at perceived infringements of their personal liberty. Clearly the radical gay rights movement has intensified this resentment and given it a mainstream media voice and great power through the court system.

Unlike Muslims, who are taught to react with violence to any perceived slight to their religion and who as a result are treated with kid gloves, Christians have the opposite tradition. Christians are taught to love their enemy and turn the other cheek. Now we seem to be on the cusp of a time when the anti-Christian bigots are not content with mocking Christians or using the courts to harass them. At the same time, 50 years of turning the other cheek and watching their country gradually be taken form them and slipping into banana republic anarachy have left many Christians on the far side of fed up.
 
Quote from AAAintheBeltway:

Christians have the opposite tradition. Christians are taught to love their enemy and turn the other cheek.
More...

holy crap. if you want to make a case that christians are not willfully ignorant of science and other things maybe you should brush up on your history. have you no concept of the bloody history of christianity even in this country?
we wont even talk about the fact that christians are about 70-80% of the population. hardly a minority.
 
but I think aaa makes a good point.
I have been wondering what motivates you to post this crap day after day. you seem to be a radical something.
you are not a radical muslim
I doubt you went from cultish church to a radical jew
Are you a radical gay? Does is bother you that so many people "non" progressive people think it is outside the mainstream to be gay and you blame that thought on religion?
 
Quote from jem:

but I think aaa makes a good point.
I have been wondering what motivates you to post this crap day after day. you seem to be a radical something.
you are not a radical muslim
I doubt you went from cultish church to a radical jew
Are you a radical gay? Does is bother you that so many people "non" progressive people think it is outside the mainstream to be gay and you blame that thought on religion?
More...

nope. i dont even know any out of the closet gays. i think homosexuals have a sad existence but its its their choice and doesnt effect me.
mostly i just like exposing absurdity and religion is ripe with it. look at you. day after day you post bullshit turned into psudoscience and try io sell it to enlightened people. it is rather amusing sparring with you.
now back to the op. what advantage can it be to have the us lag in science literacy because of what out kids are taught in church?
 
At the very least, time spent on the bible is time away from textbooks (just like TV). So the argument is not "easily refutable". Now, is there time enough in a day for both science and religion study? Depends, what's your competition doing?
 
Quote from Free Thinker:

holy crap. if you want to make a case that christians are not willfully ignorant of science and other things maybe you should brush up on your history. have you no concept of the bloody history of christianity even in this country?
we wont even talk about the fact that christians are about 70-80% of the population. hardly a minority.
More...

This is part and parcel of a growing movement by "progressives" to deny Christians positions of influence under the guise of such pretexes as scientific literacy, equal rights and reproductive freedom, ie government-funded abortion on demand.

Christians holding traditional views are openly barred from such positions on grounds that their religious beliefs conflict with accepted progressive tenets. To be even a school teacher, you have to be an enthusiastic proponent of gay sex, accept the most extreme interpretation of Darwin's theories as proven scientific fact and willingly promote alien religions and cultures.

As I said above, the first step is delegitimization, and it is well under way.
 
Quote from Free Thinker:

nope. i dont even know any out of the closet gays. i think homosexuals have a sad existence but its its their choice and doesnt effect me.
mostly i just like exposing absurdity and religion is ripe with it. look at you. day after day you post bullshit turned into psudoscience and try io sell it to enlightened people. it is rather amusing sparring with you.
now back to the op. what advantage can it be to have the us lag in science literacy because of what out kids are taught in church?
More...

the difference is you post the crap and I correct it with posts to real scientists and noble prize winners.

I do not go around trying to annoy others or impose my "false" fact that we got here by random chance. The "fact" we got here by random chance has been dismissed by almost all real scientists for a few decades.
 
Quote from AAAintheBeltway:

This is part and parcel of a growing movement by "progressives" to deny Christians positions of influence
More...

ridiculous on its face. no athiest can be elected to a government position, christians control the military. christian programing dominates am radio. christians have several 24 hour tv stations. christians churches are the only group allowed to run businesses free of taxation. exactly how are christians being denyed positions and by whom?
 
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